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malcolm costain

You’re stuck and not making any progress. You try, but you don’t move forward. You’re a car with its engine revving and the handbrake on.

It’s so frustrating.

In Ad Land, I knew the feeling well. I desperately wanted to achieve the industry’s idea of success: winning a major award, but unfortunately, I never made much progress.

I came close only once, making one of the finalist categories in The One Show, a major award in the US, but I never actually mounted the stage to collect the heavy trophy to the applause of my peers, which I had daydreamed about many times.

And it burned me up.

When I wasn’t daydreaming, I was doing OK in my job as a copywriter, and, later on, as a creative director. I worked with some great people; I helped make some very nice ads; and I got to travel the world. In many ways, things were going well.

Even so, I wasn’t satisfied. If only I could win a big award, I thought, things would be much better. There would be more travel, lucrative job offers, my name in a glossy annual of winners, and I would rise to an exulted level of people who had ‘made it.’

I continued to burn inside.

But there was a simple reason I wasn’t winning these awards: I wasn’t taking enough action to win them. I had ideas that I thought could win. I worked with other people who had great ideas too. I had even talked about presenting the ideas to our clients. But I didn’t actually take the crucial next steps required. They were too much work on top of all the work I was doing already–or so I told myself.

So, nothing happened. It still burns me.

Do you know the feeling?

This sense of frustration is the subject of ‘The Laika Project,’ one of the tales from ADLANDIA. In the story, Kelvin is a talented but junior art director who daydreams of winning a major award. He’s full of ideas, many of which he thinks are pretty good, but he never actually takes the steps required to get them made into ads. So his career, like his ideas, never really get off the ground.

Then, one morning, on his way to work, Kelvin thinks of an idea that really inspires him. He calls it, The Laika Project.

The Laika Project has enormous potential. It’s a campaign to bring back the body of Laika, the dog shot into space by the Russian space agency in 1957. Kelvin believes that with The Laika Project, he at last has the campaign that will turn everything around. He’s so fired up, that, for the first time, he begins to take the difficult steps required to bring the project to life.

But will he succeed? Will he go from zero to hero? It would be nice to think so, but the only way to find out is to click below to get your copy of ADLANDIA.

But what if you desperately need good karma now? What if you need instant karma?

In “Springtime,” one of the stories from “ADLANDIA,” a desperate copywriter called Blaze loses his creativity just before a do-or-die meeting. In a desperate bid to summon the powers of the universe to save him, he does a good deed. He comes to the aid of a homeless woman on the street.

Afterwards, Blaze doesn’t really think good karma will save him. But he does feel better about himself.

And then something strange happens.

If you have ever done a good deed in desperation, you might find Blaze’s story interesting… or disturbing.

But what if the email you just sent could do worse than damage a relationship?

What if it could ruin your career and the careers of your colleagues?

That’s the subject of ‘Natural Grace,’ the first story from my upcoming book, ADLANDIA, about the craziness of working in the advertising world.

ADLANDIA is being launched in 17 May. Early reviews are calling it ‘an absolute blast’ and ‘a must read.’

I’ll be in touch with a special offer for you and everyone who subscribes to this group.

In the meantime, scroll down to take a look at the gripping opening scene below.

Natural Grace

8:30 a.m.

Office of Leona Lee

Senior Account Director

Calthorpe Advertising

40thFloor, Calthorpe Tower

Downtown

Leona Lee, thirty-six years old and the acting account director on the Natural Grace Cosmetics account, sat frozen before the screen of her laptop. Her mouth was open and her hands were suspended above the square black tiles of the keyboard.

She had been locked in this position for almost thirty seconds, not even blinking, hardly even breathing, as motionless as a screenshot from a horror movie.

On her laptop, her email browser waited for her next command. The cursor blinked and the mouse pointed. The unread emails stood patiently in their ranks. What’s it going to be, they seemed to ask. Select email? Reply to email? Compose email? Delete email? We’re waiting for you.

But there was only one command that Leona Lee wanted, the one command that could undo the catastrophic mistake she had just made: the command to recall an email.

‘Shit,’ said Leona. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’

The trouble was, Leona didn’t know how to use the command. She wasn’t even sure it existed. The recall email command was like an urban myth. Maybe it existed; maybe it didn’t.

Leona brought her hands up to her face and held them there. ‘What have I done?’ she whispered. ‘What have I done?’